{
 "id": "ambrose-bierce/a-ballad-of-pikeville",
 "title": "A Ballad of Pikeville",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Ambrose Bierce",
 "poet_slug": "ambrose-bierce",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Shapes of Clay",
 "book_slug": "shapes-of-clay",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 162,
 "container": "Shapes of Clay",
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1903,
  "venue": "Shapes of Clay (1903)",
  "note": "First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/shapesofclay00bier"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/ambrose-bierce_poetry",
  "file": "shapes-of-clay.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4793",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12658",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12977",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/15599",
   "https://archive.org/details/collectedworksof04bierrich",
   "https://archive.org/details/collectedworksof05bierrich",
   "https://archive.org/details/collectedworksof08bierrich",
   "https://archive.org/details/shapesofclay00bier",
   "https://archive.org/details/blackbeetlesinam00bier",
   "https://archive.org/details/literarycalifor05mighgoog",
   "https://archive.org/details/cali07webb"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-20"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 46,
  "n_stanzas": 3,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 70,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Down in Southern Arizona where the Gila monster thrives,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the “Mescalero,” gifted with a hundred thousand lives,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Every hour renounces one of them by drinking liquid flame⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The assassinating wassail that has given him his name;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where the enterprising dealer in Caucasian hair is seen",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To hold his harvest festival upon the village-green,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "While the late lamented tenderfoot upon the plain is spread",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With a sanguinary circle on the summit of his head;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where the cactuses (or cacti) lift their lances in the sun,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And incautious jackass-rabbits come to sorrow as they run,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Lived a colony of settlers⁠—old Missouri was the State",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where they formerly resided at a prehistoric date.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Now, the spot that had been chosen for this colonizing scheme",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Was as waterless, believe me, as an Arizona stream.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The soil was naught but ashes, by the breezes driven free,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And an acre and a quarter were required to sprout a pea.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So agriculture languished, for the land would not produce,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And for lack of water, whisky was the beverage in use⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Costly whisky, hauled in wagons many a weary, weary day,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Mostly needed by the drivers to sustain them on their way.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Wicked whisky! King of Evils! Why, O, why did God create",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Such a curse and thrust it on us in our inoffensive state?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Once a parson came among them, and a holy man was he;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With his ailing stomach whisky wouldn’t anywise agree;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So he knelt upon the mesa and he prayed with all his chin",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That the Lord would send them water or incline their hearts to gin.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Scarcely was the prayer concluded ere an earthquake shook the land,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And with copious effusion springs burst out on every hand!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Merrily the waters gurgled, and the shock which gave them birth",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Fitly was by some declared a temperance movement of the earth.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Astounded by the miracle, the people met that night",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To celebrate it properly by some religious rite;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And ’tis truthfully recorded that before the moon had sunk",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Every man and every woman was devotionally drunk.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A half a standard gallon (says history) per head",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of the best Kentucky prime was at that ceremony shed.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "O, the glory of that country! O, the happy, happy folk",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "By the might of prayer delivered from Nature’s iron yoke!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Lo! the plains to the horizon all are yellowing with rye,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the corn upon the hill-top lifts its banners to the sky!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Gone the wagons, gone the drivers, and the road is grown to grass,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Over which the incalescent Bourbon did aforetime pass.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Pikeville (that’s the name they’ve given, in their wild, romantic way,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To that irrigation district) now distills, statistics say,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Something like a hundred gallons, out of each recurrent crop,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To the head of population⁠—and consumes it, every drop!",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}